The No. 19 Pioneer women’s soccer team played to a 1-1 draw against Louisiana Tech last Friday in their first conference game on the road since the start of Western Athletic Conference play, bringing their record to 9-1-4 overall and 1-0-2 in the WAC.
Despite the fact that the Pioneers had twice as many shots on goal as Louisiana Tech (9-1-3, 0-0-1 WAC) in the first half, the match remained scoreless at halftime.
In the 67th minute, senior forward Katy Van Lieshout scored for the Pioneers less than six yards out, finishing a rebounded shot by junior Cassidy Larson and bringing DU to a 1-0 lead. This was Lieshout’s fourth goal of the season.
“The whole entire game we kept a lot of the possession,” said Van Lieshout. “I was just in the right place at the right time and was able to follow it up and in.”
Their effort to hold on to the lead ended when Louisiana Tech managed to put the ball in the back of the net in the final two minutes of the game. This sent the match into two 10-minute overtimes to determine the final score.
“In overtime, we went into a 3-4-3 and threw everything forward to try to win the game,” said head coach Jeff Hooker. “We were willing to sacrifice the chance that we would get countered and lose the match to try to push forward and win the game. We weren’t looking for a tie.”
The team was looking for goal-scoring opportunities the entire game, with a total of 17 shots on goal compared to Louisiana Tech’s seven. Van Lieshout said the team had to change up their offensive strategy in order to score.
“Their strategy was to pack it in and get every ball that comes in cleared out,” said Van Lieshout. “It was definitely a new experience for us having to break that down and find the gaps and ways to score that didn’t necessarily go along with the way that we’re used to scoring.”
Hooker also noticed a difference in the way the girls played.
“When we are playing well, we’re connecting passes, playing two-touch and making good runs off the ball,” said Hooker. “We didn’t do that very consistently on Friday, and when we did, we weren’t able to put the resulting chance on target.”
This marks the 13th game in a row that the team has managed to remain undefeated, ending the match with either a win or a tie. However, they are looking to do more than tie in their remaining conference games.
“Our goal will continue to be to try to go out and win every game so that we can set ourselves up for a bid to the NCAA tournament before we get to the WAC tournament next month,” said Hooker.
In order to get there, Hooker believes a more basic approach will help the team improve in the long run.
“We need to get back to basics and start doing the little things that made us successful during the non-conference portion of our season,” said Hooker.
Van Lieshout said they’re taking it game by game and reminding themselves that every game matters. The Pioneers play next on Friday at 3 p.m. at New Mexico State.
